Page 100 of Walking Red Flag

Wasn’t it?

The only blizzard conditions I’m interested in are from Dairy Queen.

—Text from Milena to Cutter

CUTTER

I dropped her off at the airport with her bodyguard that morning at five, then drove to Apollo’s place to see what he’d accomplished.

If I was a man that was willing to admit his weaknesses, I’d tell everyone that it was much harder to let her go than it probably should’ve been at this stage in our relationship.

Watching her walk away from me felt like she’d cut a cord that I needed to live.

The horrible feeling in my chest at our distance was what was occupying my head when I arrived at the house in the nice neighborhood that screamed ‘family’ and not ‘biker.’ I pulled into Apollo’s drive, shut the bike off, then headed toward his door.

I felt more than saw the eyes on me.

Apollo lived in a neighborhood inhabited by old people.

I was fairly sure the median age of the entire block was seventy-five.

At any given time, they had this phone-tree thing going on that alerted the whole damn neighborhood of anything that happened the moment that it happened.

Apollo liked it because he felt like his place was always protected—which it was.

I, on the other hand, hated it.

I didn’t like prying eyes on me like that, yet I still ended up at his place once a week.

Well, I had before I’d tied myself to a beautiful black-haired beauty.

Apollo opened the door before I could knock and waved me inside.

“Asher Soren is in custody now, and get this,” he said as he walked toward the living room. “I didn’t even have to do anything to his computer. He already had that kind of sick shit on there. Though, they were underage women, around fifteen and sixteen. Had a buddy that did some shit for his start-up and he was more than willing to dig through his shit and send it in.”

I curled my lip up. “That’s disgusting.”

“It is,” he said as he caught up his cut. “You ready?”

I was.

After feeding his outside cats a scoop of cat food, he walked to his bike and mounted.

Five minutes later, the two of us were headed to Bear Bottom so I could talk to Bayou in person.

“Let me get this straight.” Bayou crossed his arms over his chest. “You want me to let you into my prison to kill a man before he can get out.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And what makes you think that I’ll allow that?” he asked carefully.

“Benson, honey.” His wife, Phoebe, came into the room. She was dressed in scrubs, and she looked like she was ready to head into work. The same work that her husband worked at, though in a different, much more secure part of the prison.

She was the prison nurse, and worked there for eight hours a day, three days a week. And the other four days of the week she was a stay-at-home mom to what seemed like fifteen children but was only six.

“Yes, Fancy?” he asked, looking at her with love and acceptance in his eyes, and not annoyance that she’d butted into a conversation that was likely pissing Bayou off.

“What would you do if a man assaulted me in that way?” she asked carefully.

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